Presumptive GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is opposed to abortion even in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Some brand that position as extreme and unreasonable, but here are some approving words about it:

1. Opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest is both philosophically and morally consistent. If one considers abortion the wrongful taking of a human life, then the origin of that life is plainly irrelevant. 2. The moral qualities of the organism in the womb do not change with the manner of conception.

3. Many opponents of abortion rights are willing to countenance abortions for women who are the victims of rape or incest, even though the moral status of the conceived child is identical to one heedlessly conceived by the town tramp.

4. The fundamental principle and claim to clarity of the anti abortion-rights movement is the black-and-white assertion that from the moment of conception, an embryo has the same right to life as any other human being.

All the years I've been a baseball fan it never hit me until yesterday, lazily watching batting practice at Wrigley Field, what an oddly feminine name "Philadelphia Phillies" is.

The dictionary tells us (though we already knew) that a "filly" is a young female horse or, in sexist slang, a young woman.

My first thought was, gee, Philadelphia Phillies sounds like the name of a WNBA franchise.

But even the WNBA doesn't have those girlie names: The women's professional basketball league has such teams as the Shock, the Fever, the Sparks, the Monarchs and the Storm. The "Atlanta Dream" is as close as the WNBA gets to those antique "Lumberjills" and "Lady Tigers" nicknames that speak unnessarily to gender. (See Unusual names for female teams and Don’t be a Jennie: Get your sports terms right).

It happens that "Phillies" is a shortened form of "Philadelphias," so the word is just a homonym of "fillies," not a cutesy spelling of the word . It's as though we called one of our baseball teams the Chicago Chis (long i) or if the Tigers were, instead, the Detroit Deets.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Richard Reeves writes on the issue of experience and how it relates to the presidency. Highlights:

I doubt that anyone ever was or ever will be [prepared to be president of the United States]. The job is sui generis. The presidency is an act of faith..... The toughest job in the world is essentially reactive. The president does not run the country and is not paid by the hour. ....The job is not about running the country; it is about leading the nation in unexpected crisis or danger. No one remembers whether Lincoln balanced the budget....In the end, we choose a president on our own sense of character and judgment. In the end, it is not about the candidate; it is about the character and judgment of the American people. We decide. It is a great gamble. Then, the president's real job is to bring out the best in us

Major League Baseball fans speak of a front-running team's "Magic Number" ---the total of victories by them plus defeats by their nearest opponent that guarantees them a first-place finish.

The calculation for a Magic Number in any sport goes like this:

(number of games per team in the entire season , + 1) - (the total number of wins the team now has + the number of losses the nearest rival team now has).

So in Major League Baseball that becomes

(162 + 1) -
(the total number of wins the team now has + the number of losses the
nearest rival team now has).

In the case of the 85-50 Cubs vis a vis the second-place Milwaukee Brewers (78-56), as of Saturday morning:

(162+1) - (85 +56) or 163-141 or 22.

But if we're just talking about making the playoffs, the number to look at is the Cubs' Magic Number relative to the team with the best record in the league that is not leading one of the three divisions ( all division winning teams in the league make the playoffs along with the one second-place team with the best record) and is not immediately behind them in the Central Division.

That team is the St. Louis Cardinals, who are at 74-61 and in third place in the Central Division but still have a slightly better record than the second place teams in the NL East and West.

They're 11 games behind the Cubs, and the Cubs magic number to finish the season with a better record than the Cardinals is 17, with 27 games left to play in the Cubs season.

Since eking into the playoffs via the wild card hardly qualifies as a magical experience, particularly when a team has enjoyed the best record in baseball nearly all year, let's call this figure the Nice Number.

And of course my calculation above assumes that one of the second-place teams in the other divisions (currently the 73-62 Philadelphia Phillies and the 65-69 Los Angeles Dodgers) won't end up with a better record than the Cardinals.

Still, it gives you a sense of how close the Cubs are to wrapping up a post-season berth.

Friday, August 29, 2008

WGN AM 720's resident conservative Milt Rosenberg erred Wednesday night when he had partisan attack dog Stanley Kurtz as his only guest for a two-hour show.

Kurtz was in town sifting through nearly 1,000 archival files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at the University of Illinois at Chicago. But even before he'd gotten access to the documents, he'd assured his National Review Online readers they would "provide significant insight into a web of ties linking [former Annenberg board chairman Barack] Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies."

Time Magazine: There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both
about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could
define honor for us?
John McCain: Read it in my books.
Time: I've read your books.
McCain: No, I'm not going to define it.
Time: But honor in politics?
McCain: I defined it in five books. Read my books.

John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate surprised me this morning for two reasons.

1. It mutes the "experience" issue. A big theme of the Republican attack ads against Democratic nominee Barack Obama is that he's "dangerously unprepared" to be the President of the United States. So their 72-year-old cancer-survivor nominee picks for his veepmate someone who has been governor of a state with a population roughly the size of Memphis or Lake County, Illinois, for not quite 21 months? Who, on the day Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator, was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town the size of our suburban village of Oak Brook?

2. It's completely reactive, at best. The Republican party really thinks gender is so important to female voters they'll overlook the vast ideological differences between Obama and McCain and pull the level for Palin? Where does the pandering leave off and the insulting tokenism begin?

Take away the gender factor with Palin and you have Dan Quayle redux -- a young (she's 44; Quayle was a 41-year-old U.S. Senator in 1988 when George H.W. Bush picked him for vice-president), attractive (she's a former winner of the Miss Wasilla pageant) doctrinaire conservative whom few considered presidential timber.

Of course Bush-Quayle won their first time around, so maybe that's a good thing for the GOP.

But whatever its merits, this, like Obama's selection of Joe Biden, does not look like a confident pick.

Surely, Obama's "eight is enough" quip ought to apply not only to President Bush's economic and foreign policy travesties, but to the elevation of mediocrity that has characterized his appointment of Michael Brown to FEMA and his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. And surely we can agree that if the McCain campaign was desperate to transparently court voters put off by Hillary Clinton's loss, there is no dearth of women with far greater intellectual, executive, and political abilities--abilities that would allow them to assume the presidency in a heartbeat.

It occurs to me that some on the right actually think that Obama is as inexperienced and as trivial a figure as Palin. So ask yourself: could Sarah Palin have run a national election campaign against, say, a machine as powerful as the Bush family, and won? Does she have the skill set to construct a campaign that would actually have brought her to the nomination herself? I find the comparison with Obama ludicrous. But it will be made. Palin looks to me like a lovely person and a good local politician, with some inevitable rough spots. I'd be delighted if she took a leadership role in the GOP in the future. But in the same league as Obama? Do Republicans really think that little of him? I guess they do.

Look, call me a partisan hack. Whatever. But I'm just stunned by the cynicism of the whole thing. I'm sure Palin is a fine person, loving mother, devoted wife, learning her way as governor, and so forth. But a heartbeat away from the presidency? Someone with virtually no serious political experience, and no serious experience of any other kind to make up for it? She's going to shake up Washington? I don't know how she'll do on the stump or in the debates. Maybe she'll be great. Who knows? But a potential leader of the free world? You gotta be kidding.

The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong. When the sexes have parted company in modern elections, it’s generally been because women are more likely to be Democrats, and more concerned about protecting the social safety net.

Nancy Nall reacts to, among other things, the praise female conservative writers are heaping on Palin for being a mother of five:

For nearly 30 years, they’ve sat in their well-paid jobs typing with their soft little hands, making the world safe for themselves. They are liars and hypocrites of the worst sort: Divorce is OK for Peggy Noonan, bad for you. Working mothers named Phyllis Schlafly or Mary Matalin or Mona Charen are good, but your job takes you away from your precious children just so you can be fulfilled, you selfish bitch.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

I'm already giving a C- to whomever thought up this bit of stagecraft for Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight in Denver:

As Mark Silva notes over in the Swamp (from which I stole this photo), the look is decidedly West Wingy -- an echo of the campaign's brief use of seal that looked an awful lot like the presidential seal.

The faux grandeur of this set will create a distracting controversy and for what reason?

Because the event wasn't going to be spectacular enough without it?

That's crazy.

If you're honestly on the fence about Obama, what do you expect to hear tonight that will make up your mind one way or the other?

On Tuesday, members of the Republican platform committee meeting in Minneapolis voted down a proposal to call the opposition the "Democrat Party" in the 2008 platform. Instead, they'll go with the proper Democratic Party.....In 1996, references to the Democratic Party were purged from a draft of the platform. As party leaders explained at the time, they wanted to make the subtle point that the Democratic Party had become elitist, no longer small-d democratic.

Oh, it was very subtle! But it was useful, in that by encouraging the use of "Democrat party" it allowed me immediately to switch off and ignore anyone who used the term, much the way I immediately begin to ignore anyone who makes gratuitous Nazi analogies.

For a while I suggested Democrats begin referring to the MOP -- Mediocre Old Party -- instead of the GOP -- which stands for "Grand Old Party" -- but it didn't take hold.

People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power... Bill Clinton in his speech Wednesday night to the Democratic National Convention

Sure, coming from a guy who was the poster boy for Bad Examples in the late 1990s there was something a bit rich about this one-liner. But it expresses a useful truth. Not just for nations, but for politicians, bosses, parents and anyone else with even a small degree of power over others.

Respect is ultimately stronger and more effective than fear. Without respect, power is fraught and fragile, hard to wield and easy to lose.

Click here for a robust webliography of sources detailing John McCain's position on abortion.

Moments don't get more illustrative than this:

The Republican National Committee called a news conference the other day in Denver to introduce reporters covering the Democratic convention to Debra Bartoshevich.

She's the former Hillary Clinton delegate from Waterford, Wis., who appears in a new TV spot expressing support for GOP presidential candidate John McCain and lauding his "maverick and independent streak."

According to news accounts, a reporter asked Bartoshevich, an emergency room nurse, how she felt about McCain's position on abortion rights.

Just fine, she said. "Going back to 1999, John McCain did an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle saying that overturning Roe vs. Wade would not make any sense, because, then, women would have to have illegal abortions."

That was true. Nine years ago, McCain said he "would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade," the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to have an abortion.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

So the scene at today's Illinois delegation breakfast in Denver (see video below) was as amusing as it was astonishing: Lots of weeping -- actually, just U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D.-Kleenex), wept, though some in attendance may have laughed until tears came to their eyes -- and embracing.

What did it all mean? Rick Pearson has the details over at Clout Street of what, I'm sure, in retrospect, will look like an insignificant, one-off moment of lugubrious sentiment and unintentional hilarity in the political war among Illinois Democrats.

But the question that comes to my mind is: When was it, exactly, than men started hugging all the time?

I don't remember lots of male hugging in the 60's and 70's, which is as far back as my memory goes. For the most part, men shook hands, even in emotional moments. Maybe they clasped forearms or clapped one another on the back...but they tended to maintain their personal spaces with one another.

I transitioned into hugging in the late 1970s in college, and it alarmed some of my more traditional male friends at first. Even just recently when one of my old roommates and I got together, his instinct, upon seeing me again, was to put out his hand.

Theories? Was there a key man hug that awakened the handshaking masses? A hug-happy celebrity?

Now that baseball is instituting replay for home run boundary disputes (story), it can't be too long before we get replay on tag outs and, finally, electronic ball-strike indication to replace the too capricious system in which home plate umps stretch and contract strike zones based on their whims.

Replay might well put delays into a game that some say is already too long. So how about a rule that says for a coach or manager to leave the dugout to argue a judgment call made on the field is cause for immediate ejection from the game.

Of course coaches and managers must be allowed to challenge umpires on interpretations and applications of the rules. But as to whether a runner was tagged out or went through on a swing or trapped a sinking liner....no bickering allowed. If there's an instance in the entire history of professional baseball of an umpire changing a judgment call because a manager complained bitterly about it, I'm not aware of it and it would be a disgrace.

Sure, jawing at the officials is a tactic in many sports, but as soon as it starts delaying the game, it's a waste of time.

In retrospect, Hillary Clinton probably lost her best shot at the presidency back in 2002 and 2003 when she decided not to make a run for the White House:

A first-term senator who isn't a white male? What kind of chance could such a candidate have? Better to wait and acquire more political seasoning.

Many people said this to Barack Obama in 2005 and 2006. But others made the case, as one adviser put it, that, occasionally, in politics, you don't choose your time, the times choose you. The array of likely opponents in both major parties and the issues at the tops of voters minds often accelerate or delay ambitions.

History isn't kind to those who hesitate* and wait for their turn or for a perfect alignment of the stars.

Clinton would have blown away a weak Democratic field of primary contenders in 2004 and, as her speech last night demonstrated, she almost certainly would have inspired more voters (both pro and con, to be sure) than John Kerry. Would she have won? Who knows, but she would have gotten further than she got in 2008.

One other point: I'm among those who thought it was odd that Clinton didn't address head-on last night the ads that the McCain campaign is now running showing clips of her during the primary impugning Obama's ability to be commander in chief. No reassurance to voters on that score, no announced change of mind and heart.

UPDATE -- Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic reports an explanation: "Had she done that, all the media would focus on is the disparity between her convention praise and her primary criticism. And she would not have sounded genuine. It would have been contrived."

Columnist Jay Mariotti's surprise decision to resign from the Sun-Times to follow the siren call of sports journalism on the Web (story) prompts me to link to one of this blog's more enduringly popular posts -- "Jay Mariotti's Year in Review," (October 28, 2005) -- in which I took readers through "12 months of Mariotti's moody musings on the White Sox".

UPDATE: "We wish Jay well and will miss him -- not personally, of course -- but in the sense of noticing he is no longer here, at least for a few days." ... Sun-Times editor Michael Cooke's statement.on Mariotti's resignation.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Not only would [the 947 internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge stored at the University of Illinois at Chicago] illuminate the working relationship between [Barack] Obama and [former Weather Underground radical] Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama’s leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question.... Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online, who is among the journalists recently granted access to the Annenberg files.

Nice to see that Kurtz is going into his exploration with an open mind.

Obama was chair of the Annenberg Challenge board from 1995 to 1999, and before Kurtz had seen the archival files, he was all but telling us he plans to use them to portray Obama as wild-eyed yet corrupt revolutionary.

Is there any chance that Kurtz will come away from his inspection of these documents and write anything on the order of, "This is no big deal. Obama and Ayers served on this board and were interested in advancing experimental ideas in education, but it was a small enough part of Obama's life and the personal connection slight enough that it wouldn't be fair to extrapolate anything from it."?

No. There is no chance. Zero. Kurtz's eyebrows are already doing the Rezko dance. We can look for him -- and then all the other innuendo merchants in the land -- to find sinister and radical connections everywhere they look in these files; to identify Obama personally, intimately with everyone remotely dubious with whom he associated and did not actively repudiate.

The Archpundit blogs on Kurtz's White Whale Hunting: "What’s strange is that Annenberg was a very mainstream effort that involved business and the community as the whole. While it’s not thought of as having provided clear reforms in terms of improvement, it did experiment quite a bit and tried out different solutions. The level of paranoia to represent such an organization as some leftist conspiracy is hard to comprehend."

Jenny Iglesias of suburban Aurora (right) was one of two American female mathletes to come home with a gold medal in the China Girls Mathematical Olympiad, held earlier this month in Zhongshan, in Guangdong Province near Hong Kong.

Iglesias, 18, a graduate of the Illinois Math and Science Academy who is leaving this week for Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif., was one of eight young women on the U.S. team.

Medals were awarded based on the girls' individual scores on a two-day math test given to some 200 international competitors. The test consisted of eight problems, which you can assume were pretty difficult.

The team blogged its experiences here. The Mathematical Association of America's news release on the competition is here.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
More about Eric Zorn

Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.